Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Elon Musk thinks he's got a major win-win for news publishers with micropayments

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

This is a fun story about Elon Musk and a serious story about micropayments. Here's the fun part: "Musk — so resolutely convinced of his own genius — has dedicated himself to making old mistakes new again, compressing a lifetime of bad ideas into six short months." Here's the serious part: "Others have written about the problems with micropayments at great length, but here are... the most significant: nobody chooses to pay them, they're a pain, they don't raise enough money, and they would eliminate subscription revenue. "If you sell subscriptions for $15 a month, but you sell individual articles at 15 cents each, you're telling any subscriber who reads less than 100 articles a month they're an idiot and should give you less money."

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Dec 22, 2024 4:56 p.m.

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